 Welcome to the non-profit show. We are so glad that you're starting your week with us. Today, we have two guests, which is a special occurrence. We have Kyle Gregory and Austin Salisbury, both joining us from Give Back Nation. They're here to talk to us and really inform us, because as I shared, this is a topic I know very little about, but they're going to talk to us about Inside Google Ad Grants. Stay with us. Before we dive deep with these guys, we want to remind you where they're coming from. Again, Give Back Nation, your giving and your fundraising hub, and we're going to learn more about both of them momentarily. Julia Patrick, we miss you today, but we're so glad that you built this platform for conversation. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, and I'm Charit Ransom, your non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group, honored to be alongside each and every day for these high-level conversations. We wouldn't be able to do it if it weren't for the amazing support from our presenting sponsors. So a huge, huge shout out of gratitude to our friends over at Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Nonprofit Thought Leader, your part-time controller, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd, as well as Nonprofit Tech Talk. So please do us a favor, do yourself a favor, do these companies a favor, check them out. They're here, I'd like to remind you, their mission is actually your mission. So they're here to help you support and elevate your mission and to do more good. Hey, if you've missed any of our episodes or you wanna go back and listen to this one with Kyle and Austin, you can find it on Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon Fire TV, and like a good ol' Chamois commercial. But wait, there's more. You can also listen to us on the non-profit shows. So wherever you stream your podcast, you can listen to us. And again, just a few hours later today, you will hear this episode with Kyle and Austin. So guys, thank you so much for patiently waiting. And I want to reintroduce you again for our viewers and our listeners. Kyle Gregory, co-founder and CEO and Austin Salisbury ad grant specialist, both with Give Back Nation. So glad that you're here. And Kyle, if I could ask you to kick us off, share a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Give Back Nation. Yeah, first thanks for having us. But yeah, Give Back Nation, we are a national 501c3 non-profit that serves about 1,000 other non-profits every year. We were founded in 2006. And really today, we've just become this hub to help. We have pro bono calls that we provide really any organization. And then over the years, we developed enhanced support. So the Google ad grant, our team started developing and supporting management of that in 2011. So we've served a little bit over 5,400 organizations in that space. And Austin is a direct part of that team, which is based out of Chicago. I'm based out of Orlando, Florida. And, but websites, coaching strategy, things like that that we help organizations with. And then we have direct connections with 80 plus partners that why reinvent the wheel. We do a lot of vetting and selecting of platforms and solutions that are out there. And we try to hopefully walk organizations down the yellow brick road, so to speak, and help them thrive, not just survive. And we talk about the fundraising ecosystem a lot. There's really a ton of things that can help you fundraise better, but there's this ecosystem that if you have it running the right way, that becomes much easier. And so three main pillars we always talk about, the first one being branding and storytelling. So the website collateral, things like that make that up. Removing barriers to give, so technology can help. The third pillar, donor management, donor data gathering, which fuels engagement, which we'll focus on today with the ad grant. So that's kind of what Get Back Nation is up to. And again, Austin, if you wanna introduce yourself, but he's up in Chicago helping to manage the ad grants. Yeah, please do, Austin. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Get Back Nation. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I guess kind of where it all started was back in my college days, I was heavily immersed in kind of the, in the field and the nonprofit space got involved in a lot of charity events, was philanthropy chairman of my fraternity and kind of that kind of launched my career of what it is now into the nonprofit realm. Full circle, I did start more so, in actual events itself, project management in the grounds, handling and overseering, volunteering. But then, at the end of the day, I saw a real kind of need and kind of where everything's going to in the digital space, so to speak, which is my introduction to Google ads among a bunch of other Google affiliated products, CRMs and whatnot. So just figured why not take a more holistic approach. You're going to hear me mention holistic more than once during our discussion today and get kind of the end grounds and the boots and the trenches experience, but also the digital experience as well. I love that. And from what you provide through Get Back Nation, this is such a critical piece of the ecosystem as well as the holistic approach. I love that word as well, Austin. So I'm ready for it. Drop it as often as you want. Well, I'd like to start out and again, what I'd shared earlier in today's episode is I know that Google ad grants are available to nonprofits and that's about all I know, right? So I feel like it's such this boulder that many of us would like to be educated on, like to know how to do it, but to be honest, it's just a little too overwhelming. So Kyle, could you tell us what do Google ad grants do? And if that's not a mouthful, I don't know what is, but tell us a little bit about the Google ad grants and what they could do for nonprofits. Yeah, I mean, in a nutshell, it's providing free ads that gets organizations in front of more eyeballs. So it's engagement. It's getting in front of new individuals and organizations that maybe will support their cause in some way. So in 2003, the Google ad grant program was developed. Since then, over 20 years or so now, over $9 million in free ads have been given out. Over 115,000 organizations have been supported in over 50 countries. So the end game is you have Google ads, which you're typing into Google and you type in, you know, kids cancer charity. You may see a couple of the first posts that have that AD next to it. If you're typing anything, football, NFL, whatever the case may be. And so anytime you see that, that's an ad. Now, if you look at it, there's no cost to that. That's called an impression. And that's free advertising, if you will. And they may not click on that link, but they see your brand and maybe the 10th time they see it, they actually do something. But if they do click on it, there's a cost. And it could be 50 cents, it could be $50. It's all on how valuable that keyword is that they're typing in. It could be one word, could be several words. So that's where it all started. And over the years, Google has provided a certain amount of money per month. Currently it's $10,000. I know it's gone up to what $40,000, Austin? It was up there at some point or maybe there's still some grandfathered in organizations. Correct, yes. Yeah, $40,000 was the year kind of their pro plan of it in the past. There's still some organizations grandfathered but, you know, current events like, for example, you know, the whole Ukraine situation, nonprofits that do kind of help affect and impact and improve situations related to current events, Google has been known to allocate additional ad spend to those organizations. Wow. In 20 years, Kyle, I didn't realize that. Yeah, yeah, it's been around but yeah, just continuing on that. So it's an opportunity that majority of organizations can leverage. And we'll talk about that here shortly. But it's just the management of it, you know, you kind of get into it, you get approved and the management of it, how you maximize the $10,000 because it's not just, they're not giving you a check for $10,000. They want to see successes, they want to see conversions, they want to know that you know what you're doing so that they're going to provide you this amount of money versus some other organization that they could be helping, so to speak. But yeah, so hopefully that helps a little bit. Now that does help to like, you know, set the baseline. What are they, how do we use them? And we're going to talk more about that. And Austin, as I like to call myself the nonprofit nerd, I'm counting on you to just nerd out with me, you know, as we get to that point. So let's start off, Austin. What types of nonprofits are eligible? Is it any and all of them? Is it, you know, a certain criteria? Can you talk to us about eligibility? Yeah, the first thing I would say is if you are someone that is looking into, you know, pursuing the Google Adgrant, start with a quick Google search. Google has a number of guides, FAQs and resources and they will give you a little bit of insight and direction into, okay, am I eligible? Am I, you know, credible based off of my status to be able to gain the Google Adgrant? The primary organization that we do work with are 501c3 registered nonprofit organizations. That's the status that's directly affiliated with the US. But again, eligibility, it's eligible international. Obviously where that's gonna differentiate with the application itself is you're gonna submit different paperwork with who they use to kind of vet a nonprofit tech soup and then Google's Adgrant team as well too. Yeah, so for a lot of grants, I know like just in general, you know, Family Foundation, Corporate Foundation, something like that, they really look for that eligibility of a three year history. Is that the same with Google Adgrants or is it once you have your IRS determination letter, it's open? Once you have the letter, it's open. I'm still gonna look at some other requirements too. They're gonna look at your website, which I know we'll dive more so into the application itself here shortly, but two portions of it, the second portion, they're gonna look a lot about your website, a lot more in depth and directly. The first portion, it is one of the things through the forms that you submit, you will provide your website itself. But yeah, virtually as long as you have a compliant website, compliant with the website policy, which is another FAQ that you can do a Google search on, as well as your proper documentation, the process itself is seamless, where it gets trickier is the actual management of the grants that kind of the after acquire it. I'm laughing just a little because it's like, if you don't know how to do Google Adgrants, Google it, right? Like where else to go, but Google to find a little bit more of those FAQs. So let's talk about that application, Kyle. What does it entail? Is it again, I talk about grants when it comes to like family foundations and corporations, and I know that it's not a one size fit all, but I'm curious what the Google Adgrant application does look like. Yeah, I'll kind of start the conversation, also I'll let you kind of finish it, but it's real easy to find out what the process is. If you go to, if you Google, Google for nonprofits, it'll get you to that website. And so it's a two step process of approval. First, you want to get approved for the Google for nonprofits account. TechSoup gets involved, and there's a process that it goes through. And then there's a second approval for the actual, the Adgrant. So I'll pause it if you want to expound upon that a little bit. Yeah, when you're starting out the process to Kyle's point, two parts of it. First part is for Google for nonprofits. There's an actuality number of Google affiliated resources and products that they'll provide to nonprofit organizations. This could be all found on the product page. Once you do get a Google for nonprofits account set up for your organization. So lots of other quality things to check into on there. But you'll see at the very, very top, the what's called the Adgrant Activation Request, which is just a simple form submission. They'll put some additional info on there mostly related to the scope of the nonprofit, the field, the impact, the work you do as well as your website. And that completes the process. The trickiest aspect of the application, I do believe falls in the Google for nonprofits portion when TechSoup is verifying your organization. They're going to be looking for a very particular document, particularly the one that you've received in the mail from the IRS, our Department of Treasury. It's best when you're submitting this portion to take a picture of the physical copy, make sure you have a clear notable background and submit that form instead of one that's scanned or copied. Because they'll be very careful. They're very cognitive of one ad grant or nonprofit organization. It says at the end of the day, fantastic offering from Google. So they just want to be sure that the people that are utilizing it, the nonprofit organizations that it's going towards to support their efforts and initiatives, they're very careful in their vetting process. Austin, what does the timeline look like? So once we submit for this application, I know I get a lot of questions about how long does it take to start a nonprofit? So we're not talking about that rabbit hole, but really about the application. Do you have a ballpark of what that length is right now? Yeah, it's going to vary. If you have a TechSoup validation token already, it's going to take you only a couple of days to get approved for a day, to get approved for a Google for nonprofit, and a day after that, if all goes well, to get approved for the ad grant itself. If you're starting the process anew, it can take anywhere from a couple of days to two weeks. And I'd say that the longest duration is if someone set it up in the past, whether that's another managing company or the marketing company or a team member that's no longer affiliated with an organization and you need to recover an account, that's where you're going to see the longest duration, which can take two plus weeks. Okay. Kyle, you were going to add on to that. I was curious to hear. That's, he hit it. So reactivation. Yeah, just, it's amazing how many organizations, I mean, we, you know, you've, when you support thousands of organizations over 10 plus years, you see and hear a lot, but it's amazing how they go, well, we think we might've activated this at one point. And sure enough, they did. And it was someone who's not with the organization anymore. And you just go through that process. But being that, you know, in 2018, the team was one of 10 organizations that helped Google create Google certification. So we've been Google certified and, you know, since the beginning and so we have a direct connect team does with Google so that it kind of helps in that process. Of course, Austin knows more about that. But, but yeah, so just wanted to touch on that. Yeah, no, that's fascinating to me. Again, you know, I, I owned up that Google ad grants is not something I'm very versed in. I know that many of my clients across the nation have definitely taken advantage of this opportunity. So talk to us about, you know, Kyle, if you could share, what does it take to set up and then to manage this Google ad grant? Yeah, so again, I'll kind of start the convo and let Austin dive a little deeper. So, so in the beginning, you get approved and then it's looking at a few things as you start to set up the actual grants or the ads in the backend of Google. And first and foremost, there's things that you want to set up first. And again, you touched, Austin touched on it. The website is a big part of this. If you have a very simple website that isn't built out, you're gonna be held back immensely. And the end game is you have $10,000 available, but you don't start off there. You start off with a couple of hundred dollars that Google kind of gives you to start testing and pretty campaigns and ad groups. So you don't just start off with that amount of money. You have to earn it. And it can take three, six, nine months depending on the size of the organization, how much traffic you're already getting. So the website is key. We built out, again, give back websites to not just help organizations in that space, but a lot of organizations just need some coaching and what to add to their site. They may have a landing page on their site that talks about five different things, break that stuff out, make five additional pages, add more content to your site, create more relevant keywords that you can leverage with the ad grants. In our, when we manage sites, it's unlimited. And what that means is there's a lot of management resources that are out there that they zero in on a topic or an objective. Really in the beginning, you wanna throw as much money on the wall as possible. So you wanna use every page on your site. You wanna just get stuff out there. You're trying to get as many clicks as possible. You're trying to expedite the ad spend and get as much as you can in the beginning before you start converting to conversions, to your bidding strategy. So we talk about, a campaign is really the top theme. You can look at a menu of a website, the main menu. Each one of those different tabs could essentially be a campaign. And then look at your dropdowns and those are essentially ad groups that zero in a little bit further. And then you have the actual ads that are hopefully leveraging relevant keywords that people might type in. And each one of those keywords, of course, has a cost. And also if you wanna expound upon that, you've got the opportunity when you're going after clicks versus conversions. And of course, the ad spend goes up on the conversion side. But yeah, if you wanna kinda get into the weeds a little bit more. Yeah, holistic. I know again, that's one of my favorite words to use. It's an approach that I recommend that all accounts take, whether you're trying to manage internally or working with a managing company. At the end of the day, all managing companies, there's consultants, there's certain party freelancers. They all do different things in the account. Some of them do take a home approach and focus. I only wanna build ads for our donation page or I only wanna build ads for our homepage or our programs page. And in long-term, 100% that should be where you hope your traffic segues do and hope majority of your ads been being utilized for. But to start out, I kinda like to use the draft athlete analogy. Athletes that are getting drafted at young ages of 18 and two pro sports, they're not gonna be superstars right when they're just drafted and entering. It's gonna take time for them to be molded to become those superstars. The same can be said for ad grant accounts. If you're just starting out, it is very, very, very hard to use. And that's why I always say up to 10K ads been because at the end of the day, not all nonprofits will. And especially to start, we've opted times. If you consider the average amount of ads been, it's anywhere from $400 to $800 on a monthly basis. That's not a significant amount of money in comparison to the full 10K you're allotted. So take a holistic approach to the start. Think through the lens of users and the user experience. They're gonna look at more than one page anyway. So even if you're driving them to a page that might not be super prominent from a driving standpoints, it barely gets people onto your website, helps your account utilize more of the 10K you're allotted. And Google is gonna be cognizant of the fact that you are using more ad spend and your account is performing well. So over time, you'll start to see all those metrics start to go up. And then long-term, that's when you're gonna wanna switch your account and focus less holistic and more so. Okay, now that we have our traffic foundation in place, now that we're leveraging up to the full 10K ad spend, how can we get it to where we want it to go instead? And then more importantly, how can we get users to convert on the pages that we're driving them to? Awesome, this sounds like a full-time job. What can we expect by way of time management for managing the ad grants? And I'm sure it's like lower, lowest case, highest case, and there's something in between, but what is on average, what should we expect? Yeah, great question. The amount of time you put into your account is to really how well it's gonna do from a performance standpoint. A lot of hours do go into it. So one of the trickiest fits I see with the ad grant and especially newer nonprofit organizations is the member that's starting it out might wear many different hats. They might have a little bit of ties in, event planning, a little bit of project management, a little bit of digital advertising. And it's hard to do all that hard to put in that kind of necessary time to especially get your ad grant account up and running and started. So hours can be kind of the short-term estimate. You could spend as little as four hours if you're utilizing all of Google's tools, kind of their order builder tools, the keyword planner. But if you have a large website, which large websites are very good fits for the ad grants, it could take 10 plus hours or even longer on a regular basis. So a lot of time does go into once you've built the content, optimizing the content, improving it based off what you're seeing. It might be cleaning up keywords, which if you have hundreds of keywords in there, it's gonna require you to clean up that hundred, add additional hundred, maybe you aren't using just yet, add negative keywords that you wanna kind of prevent your ads from appearing in front of. But that's just keyword optimization. You gotta optimize the ads too. Maybe your ads are being scored a lower strength on your account. And Google will note ways that you can prove upon that, adding more headlines, adding more descriptions, or even adding some of the more obscure things in Google ad grant accounts, such as image extensions and things like that to get them scored higher. All of the time adds up. I am officially overwhelmed. Yeah, I was gonna. It makes total sense for you to give back nation. Kyle, we don't have too much time, but I love that Give Back Nation is here as a solution because not everybody, and this is a compliment Austin is as nerdy as Austin to be able to know how to do all of this. So Kyle, tell us a little bit. And again, as we kind of wrap up today's conversation, what does it look like to work with you? Yeah, so first and foremost, we provide pro bono brainstorming calls to any organization. So if any organization just wants to ask questions or they have an ad grant, they're trying to maximize it, we provide that. So go to givebacknation.com and you can click on schedule a call and take off. But yeah, just so our support, again, there's organizations that will charge $1,000 and up a month and really just dive into this and we do things at cost. We developed Give Back Nation in 2006 to really just be a service that doesn't break the bank and we try to just help. So we provide really everything that's needed starting at $500 a month to maximize the ad grants. And Austin mentioned $400 is the average ad spend for a self-managed account. And once you start getting Google certification that number doubles and triples pretty easily. And then as you get coached on things you can do with the website and opportunities, then you start getting to that $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 a month range, but yeah, so we do everything at cost at Give Back Nation. We try to, we have third party support that helps fund Give Back Nation. I have a for-profit marketing firm that helps fund it. So we're just trying to help and it's a lot of organizations over a year, a year and a half of getting some support, they start getting to the point where they can self-manage and they can kind of start figuring some things out. So the in-game is just trying to learn more about it. We're happy to schedule those calls and just try to educate folks on the impact of what it can do for an organization. And also if you quantify it down, if you get, you're using $1,000 of the ad spend, that's about 500 to 1,000 clicks every month at a minimum really, because that's, you know, if that's 50 cents a click and that's on the lower end. So just think of 500 to 1,000 new eyeballs to your site and just like Austin was talking about, even though you're not focused on, let's get more donations, you're just trying to saturate, someone gets to your site in some way, they're gonna start clicking around. They're gonna see something else and hopefully that gives them enough to wanna learn more and maybe they get involved in something simple in the beginning, but as you cultivate and continue to touch them, they might become a donor someday. So it's an opportunity to get in front of more eyeballs. You know, I was talking to a client of mine and one of their staff members, you know, he had mentioned that he was a marketing major and he goes, but this was well before social media, right? So there's a lot of changes that have taken place. I'm curious, Austin, who in the agency or the organization would you be working with? Is this a marketing communications person? Is it a development person? Is it one of the same? I mean, who is that person? I can imagine there's, you know, a contract person or a liaison, if you will, with the organization as well as Give Back Nation. Typically, who is that person? Yeah, I like to always think of it as a collaborative opportunity. Obviously where Kyle can come in is, you know, your website does have an effect on your aggregate account. So you can obviously make adjustments on site, whether that be, you know, fine tuning, you know, your conversion tracking or, you know, adding a keyword as plain text onto a page. So, you know, look a little bit with, you know, some of the more, you know, kind of website technical oriented things. Marketing is yes, a very common one too. Google Ads has a paid offering as well. And I know a PPC is a very common terminology associated with marketing. You can use it with social ads. You can use it with Google Ads paid ads. So there's a lot of similarities there, but yeah, a lot of collaboration. I even find, you know, connecting with nonprofits, you know, there's a couple of models, one, you know, digital behind the scenes where we'll do everything for you to, you know, take all this hours that is needed to maximize your aggregate account and require very little work on your end. But some nonprofits prefer to connect with us on a regular basis. And I find that those meetings can be helpful in that. They know their content, you know, they know what audiences that they want to reach and also what they got going on in their initiatives and campaigns. So collaboration is something that's great and something that truly helps aggregate accounts. I love it. And for those of you watching, you see the image as two women giving each other a high five. So that to me speaks of collaboration as well. Well, both of you, Kyle and Austin, thank you so very much. I came in overwhelmed. I'm leaving overwhelmed, but I do know that the solution is Give Back Nation. So again, for any of you having similar feelings, you know, as you heard Kyle say, pro bono calls, give them a call. Kyle, if you would tell us where we can contact you, how we can contact you and get on your calendar. Yeah, givebacknation.com or adgrantmanager.com. That's the focus site. There's a lot of information there, a lot of facts, a lot of success stories. You can check your eligibility. So adgrantmanager.com or givebacknation.com. And then my direct is Kyle at givebacknation.com. Austin is Austin at givebacknation.com. So not too hard there. But yeah, happy to answer questions. And that's what we're here to do. We're here to help our nonprofit that serves other nonprofits. Very generous. Thank you so much, both of you. Again, for those of you watching or listening, Kyle Gregory, co-founder and CEO of givebacknation, as well as Austin Salisbury, adgrant specialist, givebacknation. Having both of you on has been such a pleasure. You know, really learning and diving deeper into this is so needed. I can only imagine the amount of people that are going to find today's conversation helpful and then hopefully reach out to both of you. So thank you both for being on. I am just so, so very appreciative. I love having these conversations. Julia Patrick, thank you for creating the platform to do such. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And again, a shout out to our amazing presenting sponsors that allow us to have guests like Kyle and Austin join us today. So thank you to Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. So very happy to have their support. Allow us again in these conversations. Hey, if you missed any of today's episode or you wanna go back and re-listen to it, you absolutely can and you can also share it in just a couple of hours. So guys, thank you again and thank you to Giveback Nation, your entire team for being a nonprofit to serve other nonprofits. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you guys both. And thanks for all of you that have joined us live or watch the recording as we remind you and ourselves as well as our guests each and every day. As we conclude today's episode, we want to remind you to please stay well so you can continue to do well. Thanks guys.